I think the whole Senna connection has been very overplayed by Honda's marketing department. Other racing drivers had more input then he did.
The Senna connection may be overplayed, but it's still there. Even better is the Zanardi special edition, coming off his successful run at CART. Yeah, yeah... he sucked in F1, but Zanardi is still my favorite...
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Uncool, not many people outside the car world know what it is so you would have to explain it to them, which means it's uncool.
Since when has anyone needed to explain a mid-engined supercar? You will more likely need to explain to Joe Schmoe that no, this is
not the Ferrari you're looking for....
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This the car that gave us the modern Ferrari and helped usher in the age of the hypercar.
No, really.
When the NSX came out, it put Ferrari's then-current midship sportscars to shame. It accelerated better. It cornered better. It rode better. It was more benign, more predictable, more useable and more communicative. And with the very first variable-valve production engine, all-aluminum construction and titanium bits, it was more exotic, too. So the on-paper numbers were unimpressive... it did more with those numbers than any car of its time.
This forced Ferrari to get serious about building sports cars again. Hence the competent 355... the even better 360... the fantastic 430 and the supercar-level 458.
Gordon Murray used it as a benchmark for building the McLaren F1. Anything that causes such an epic thing to come about is epic times two.
It annoys Audi no end, when they claim to have built the first aluminum production car (and they still try!), when someone reminds them of the NSX.
It was so good that it left Honda baffled as to how to further develop it without ruining that fine balance between power and lightness. They eventually gave up and left it virtually unchanged for fifteen years. (note: production ended in 2005, not 2001!)
And lastly: this is a car that people commute in, abuse, ruin with modifications and just plain run into the ground. It's not uncommon to see secondhand ones for sale with ridiculous mileage on them. And yet they're still going. Like the McLaren, it's one of those rare supercars that actually sees the rain from time to time. The percentage of runners versus garage queens elevates this one beyond the common supercar. Say hello to hydrogen snow.